BELIEF AND PRETENSE: A REPLY TO GENDLER

Abstract: In cases of imaginative contagion, imagining something has doxastic or doxastic‐like consequences. In this reply to Tamar Szabó Gendler's article in this collection, I investigate what the philosophical consequences of these cases could be. I argue (i) that imaginative contagion has consequences for how we should understand the nature of imagination and (ii) that imaginative contagion has consequences for our understanding of what belief‐forming mechanisms there are. Along the way, I make some remarks about what the consequences of the contagion cases are for the relation between knowledge and imagination.     

SCIENCE AND REALITY, RELIGION AND GOD: A REPLY TO HARRY PROSCH

Abstract. Michael Polanyi saw his epistemology as restoring the capacity of a scientific age to believe again in the reality of God known through religion. This central feature of Polanyi's thought, discussed in my book The Way of Discovery , is disputed by Harry Prosch, co-author with Polanyi of Meaning. Prosch's argument is that while in Polanyi's view science deals with an independent reality, religion and theology do not and are only works of our imagination. This article answers Prosch with a review of Polanyi's Christian affiliations, his conceptions of the common ground of science and religion, the levels of reality to which both science and religion provide access, and his expressed aim to liberate faith from scientific dogmatism.